Mr. Hirst-- My memory erred with regard to the framing and hanging of the letter. I doubt that it is the one in Virginia unless Levy read Tom Sawyer and wrote immediately after. There is also the matter of the reference to "Hattie" in the quotation she published. The quotation below is from "920 O'Farrell Street" (page 18), Harriet Lane Levy (1947). It has been reprinted in the past few years ...I wrote to the great for autographs and they responded with a name, sometimes with a line. Everybody answered. Once when I wrote, asking for the origin of the magic carpet referred to in Keramos--the subject of our high school study-- Longfellow answered with a long letter, which I framed between glass and swung on a slender bronze crane from the mantel in my bedroom. I wrote as to a friend, occasionally permitting humor to enter into my note of request. To Samuel Clemens in Hartford I told of my appreciation of Tom Sawyer, reminding him that its author was also a resident of Hartford, and asking that Mr. Clemens use his persuasion to induce Mark Twain to send me his autograph. When the reply came I sailed the air, for he wrote, "I hunted him up, Miss Hattie, and got it without difficulty," and signed two names: Samuel Clemens and Mark Twain. Levy goes on to list a few other respondents, including Whittier and Josh Billings. She alludes to "poets and Presidents" who answered her request for an autograph. She is an interesting figure in her own right. Alice B. Toklas lived next door and Levy was her travelling companion on vacations. Levy got Toklas to go to Paris, and the rest of that story is the subject of some other listserve. Dennis Kelly